


No Dress Code: Striking A Chord

by GuileandGall



Series: No Dress Code [8]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Creativity, F/M, House Cleaning, Music, Rock Star
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 11:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13212750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuileandGall/pseuds/GuileandGall
Summary: About artists and the people that love them despite their inability to pick up after themselves. A simple bit of fluff from Furia and Eli’s domestic happily ever after.





	No Dress Code: Striking A Chord

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is the fluff from lunch the other day. I cleaned it up a little, but I’m not sure it’s ready for other eyes. Despite that I’m just posting it because I can, and I want to.

Her apartment always felt small. With two people there, it felt much more so, but she attributed that to Eli's innate ability to create squalor. He just dropped things in the first spot and left them there—his jacket hung halfway off a kitchen chair, she grabbed a blood-stained pair of jeans out of the path from the front door to the bedroom that lay there against the ancient dark wood slats looking like Eli had literally just walked out of them when he arrived last night.

He had come to bed long after she had fallen asleep waiting, and he had woken long before her. He was perched on the edge of the black sofa playing bits and pieces of something new, or so Soledad assumed it was new by the pencil in his mouth. He would play a bit, then scribble. Removing and replacing the pencil between his teeth. 

It did not happen often, though from time to time she witnessed his creative spark. The most shocking bit was that he had clothes on this time. The loose shorts and T-shirt with the huge gaping sides suggested to her that he'd been running already. That might have been what inspired his little session.

As usual, she did not interfere, just watched while making herself look busy. She gathered the clothes he'd discarded the night before, picked up his boots and stored them in the closet, even though she was certain that later he'd walk right to the spot he left them and then ask her where they were. After putting the small two-room space back in a hint of order, she opened the log book and started to check the receipts from the clubs for the last week. 

She listened to him, humming softly as he played something unfamiliar to her ear. A few hours after he started she set a pair of empanadas--one cherry and one peach--on the table with a glass of horchata. From time to time, Eli could lose himself in writing; so, when he seemed to be in that zone, Soledad remembered the little things he might forget about. He made it easy for her to read the signs—that honest streak of his went far beyond words into his actions and facial expressions. 

When the humming stopped, she looked up from her accounting more frequently. The little frustrated groans and growling grunts told her the session would be over soon, but she kept her distance until he tossed down the pencil and leaned back into the sofa with a frustrated sigh. His hands pressed over his face and into his hair as he stared at the notebook on the table. That was her cue. 

The feet of her chair scraped the floor, though she tried not to announce herself. She crossed the room quickly, placing one hand on the back of the sofa and leaning over him. The other joined his hands in his hair. It only took a moment for him to abandon her to it. His hands fell back by his side and Eli closed his eyes with a low content hum. It almost sounded like a purr. 

"Sometimes I think you're part cat," she whispered against his forehead, her fingers still pressing and teasing through his hair.

He replied with a more realistic purr, then looked up at her with a smile.

Given the state of his smile, she asked, "Would you play it for me?" 

"It's not ready yet," he replied, coiling a strand of her hair around his finger. Her black hair hung like curtains, cutting off the rest of the world and segregating them in a space all their own. Eli smiled, softly at first, then he pulled gently at the lock woven around his finger—his eyes brimmed with a mischievous sparkle.

Soledad made up the distance leaning over him and pressing a soft, but awkward kiss to his lips. Taking his answer as her invitation, she crawled over the back of the sofa and cuddled next to him. He loosed her hair and she touched his cheek lightly, taking another kiss; this one much different than the last. When it broke, Eli petted her hair and peppered her mouth with soft pecks.

She leaned back just a hair, to get his attention. "I think this is the perfect time for you to teach me some more," she suggested.

He laughed, then moved his guitar and patted his thigh. Soledad scrambled into his lap and wriggled herself between his legs with enough speed and dexterity to intensify his laughter. Eli straightened up behind her, then dropped a kiss on the back of her bare shoulder.

"No being cute, I'm trying to learn here," she argued, glancing back at him with a look that merely hinted at stern.

His smile bloomed against her shoulder. That troublemaker look, the one that made her pulse race, returned to his eyes. Despite that, Eli laid the instrument into her lap. She shifted a little finding a comfortable hold on the instrument. His left hand touched her wrist and the other lay almost innocently on her hip. "Do you remember the last chord I taught you?"

She nodded emphatically, though she bit her lip. It had been awhile, and, admittedly, the first time she asked him to teach her it was a rouse to get into his lap and have his arms around her. Though over the months, her interest had become marginally serious, though she didn't really practice aside from little moments like those. 

"I think so," she said, leaning over the guitar a little farther and watching her fingers with great interest as she placed them in what she hoped were the right places on the correct strings. Then she strummed, and winced. "Maybe not."

The mistake earned a smile, regardless. Eli rested his chin on her shoulder, his hand covering hers. Her fingers moved with his. She had not been too far off, it seemed. Just enough for it to sound horrid. When she strummed the second time it sounded right—a deep tone bordering on mournful filled the room. When the sensation of Eli's hand over hers changed, she moved her fingers with his. After each halt, she played another chord, finding the progression of the tune familiar, she smiled and giggled at her success.

"You know if you would practice—" he started to say, but stopped when she turned in his arms.

"If I practiced, then you wouldn't have to teach me. I like our lessons." Soledad pressed what she planned to be a quick kiss on his lips. Eli's hand on her chin kept her there as he deepened the kiss incrementally until they were both breathless.

"So do I."


End file.
